Tag Archives: eMail address

On my iPhone I keep getting a warning message that I need to log in to an old eMail-account that I no longer own. I just need the old mailbox around on my Mac because I might need to access the old eMails sometime in the future, but I don’t need any of it on my iPhone.

What can I do ?

Answer :

On your Mac, you just need to set the account to ‘Inactive’. To do so, do this :

open Mail.app

in the top menu bar, top left, next to the Apple-logo, click on Mail

in the pulldown-menu, click on Accounts

in the new window that opens, click on the old eMail-account in the list on the left

in the info that appears, make sure that “Enable this account” is unchecked

Then, on your iPhone, make sure that the old eMail-address is not active in any way :

open the Settings.app

in the window that opens (“Settings”), scroll down and click on Mail

in the window that opens (“Mail”), click on Notifications

in the window that opens (“Notifications”), see if the old eMail-address is listed

if it’s not listed, you’re okay

if it is listed, click on it

in the window that opens, switch “Allow Notifications” to OFF

then go back/exit to the first window of the Settings.app (“Settings”)

click on Notes

in the window that opens (“Notes”), at “Default Account” click on the account name on the right

in the window that opens (“Default Account”), see if your old eMail-address is listed

if it is not listed, you’re okay

if it is listed, make sure it isn’t checked as your Default Account

then go back / exit to the iPhone’s main screen

open the Notes.app

Note : you might get a warning message here saying you need to input your old eMail-account’s password… if so, just deny

in the window that opens (“Notes”), click on the orange <-icon top left

in the window that opens (“Folders”), see if the old eMail-account is listed

if it is not listed, you’re okay

if it is listed, see how many notes each folder contains, and write those numbers down

then click on the >-icon at the right of the old eMail-account

in the window that opens (“Notes”), you will see all of the notes that are still on the old eMail-account

then click on Edit (top right)

then click on Move All (bottom left)

in the window that opens, select a folder to move these old notes to (I would suggest to move them to your iCloud account’s folder, but you can choose any other folder, or you can create a new folder by clicking on “New Folder”)

then, in the window that opens (“Folders”), your old eMail-account will still be listed, but the number of notes in it will be 0 (and the number of notes in the folder that you’ve previously chosen will have increased by the exact number that was in your old eMail-account)

then go back / exit to the iPhone’s main screen

open the Settings.app

in the window that opens (“Settings”), scroll down and click on “Passwords & Accounts”

in the window that opens (“Passwords & Accounts”), see if the old eMail-address is listed

if it is not listed, you’re okay

if it is listed, see if anything is mentioned below it (e.g. “Inactive”, “Mail” of “Notes”) and click on the >-icon at the right of it

in the window that opens, make sure that everything is switched to OFF (e.g. “Mail” and “Notes”)

when the “are you sure you want to continue?” pop-up opens, you can now click on “Delete from My iPhone” since you have just moved your notes to another account

Note : you might run into a bug here that prevents you from switching of Notes for your old eMail-account, if so : just leave it